User:CZMatt

Hello! I am CZMatt, a high school student with an immense interest in space exploration!

Editing philosophy

Below is my editing philosophy, just in case someone happens to care.

Beyond Wikipedia

Since I come from Wikipedia, most of my philosophies originate there. However, Marspedia is a very different place from Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a generalized encyclopedia. As such, Wikipedia articles must reach a higher standard of notability. One is not going to find an article deeply specialized articles on Wikipedia about Martian igneous rock or early emerging technologies that can aid greatly on. This is what Marspedia is for. Thus, Marspedia is much more likely to be use by people with an active interest in space exploration. These people are much more likely to know the basics about space exploration, so the language of Marspedia may be much more science-oriented.

On boldness

I believe the best way to create many good articles quickly is for users to be bold and to make a change when they see a way for the wiki to be improved. I pretty much agree with the Wikipedia policy on boldness here.

On citations

I believe that everything I write as fact on a wiki should have citations backing it up. Due to the nature of this wiki, that might mean me just linking to an essay explaining my reasoning somewhere in my user-space. This is a personal bar; I do not hold this expectation for other users because I believe that so much knowledge on this wiki will originate from life-long space exploration lovers that just their experience alone will allow for the material written to be reasonably credible for the purposes of this wiki.

Second, Marspedia expands beyond Wikipedia in that it is a place for the presentation of fact and discussion, while Wikipedia only intends to present fact, using discussion to decide how to best present that fact. Thus, much more on Marspedia is likely to be subjective. While these arguments must be reasonably construed, they cannot be expected to cite sources as factual information is expected to be referenced.

I do believe, however, that if there is a disagreement on the presentation of fact on Marspedia, then factual citations should be introduced, as if two or more intelligent individuals disagree on the presentation of fact, then external sources should be introduced to mediate the disagreement. I believe that Marspedia should work to be as credible as possible despite its specialized nature so that it can maintain status as a premier source of information about the Martian planet.

In this sort of specialized wiki, not everything will be able to be backed up by scientific papers or news articles. As such, forum threads, Reddit threads, explanatory YouTube videos, or original research should suffice for citable work. It is always preferable that published work is cited, but specialization makes this impossible.